EMERGENCY ROOM is
developed by French-Danish artist Thierry
Geoffroy/ COLONEL. It is an internationally recognized art format and
specially designed space for exhibitions changing every day, where
professional artists are stimulated to express and rank the most
alarming emergencies of today.

EMERGENCY ROOM is a place where the public and the media meet artists’
intuitive, avant-garde and sharp visions of the world. The hard and
ultrafast conditions of constant daily production is generating
artistic experiments and new forms of artistic expression AESTHETICS OF
EMERGENCY

EMERGENCY ROOM is a laboratory for new types for artistic
collaborations across different aesthetic directions, cultural
backgrounds and generations. Approximately 450 artists, including
recognized international artists have participated in EMERGENCY ROOM in
8 institutions including MoMA PS1 in New York. More about the community
behind EMERGENCY ROOM available at: www.emergencyrooms.org/artists.html

“Normally, an artist has to wait
months or years to create an exhibition because it is necessary to
negotiate with an art institution, find funding etc. This limits the
artist with an urge to respond to the contemporary. Emergency Room is an open space that
gives the artists an opportunity to do just that. Through Emergency
Room, artists can scan the news media or report from their neighborhood
and react to the current debate every day. No comment or reaction is
wrong. Artists can include newspapers, print magazines, Internet screen
dumps, broadcast television news, documentaries, sound sampling or
sabotage and attack on common knowledge distributed in the media is
also possible. “ (Thierry Geoffroy/ COLONEL – artist
and the concept owner of EMERGENCY ROOM)ARTISTS - being “in advance of
the broken arm"?

In EMERGENCY ROOM artists are thermometers for detecting,
measuring and giving diagnosis of the dysfunctions in the society.
Artists are experts in capturing alarming issues immediately or even in
advance - "in advance of the broken arm". They have the ability
to spot and unveil what may be an issue tomorrow and have important
implications for our future. With their art works they are not only
able to treat emergencies but also to prevent accidents. In order
important artistic visions to reach a large attentive audience as fast
as possible, what artist feel NOW has to be exhibited in real time -
before it is too late.

ARTISTS,
VISITORS AND MEDIAS - A large debating audience meeting around art works

Through EMERGENCY ROOM, artists can (if they wish) react
every day and train collectively their "Awareness Muscle" (as a group,
as an art movement or with the public). By being an exhibition alive,
and commenting on burning events, EMERGENCY ROOM creates proximity to
the public and to the distribution media channels coming. Everyday
there will be new angles, alarming discoveries and everyday there will
be new reasons for audience and media to tune back to EMERGENCY ROOM.
Many of the visitors come several times to follow up the daily change.

The ultrafast turn over in the EMERGENCY ROOM is kept under constant
documentation and re-exposed. Beside the physical exhibition what is
exhibited and debated in EMERGENCY ROOM is also distributed on
Internet. In the media the documentation and the debate is both
appearing in external medias but also in EMERGENCY ROOMs own blogs
created every day.

“Artists, audience and media have
been fighting for weeks in order to get to see and participate in the
new and innovating exhibition that with its "art of the news" puts the
art institution itself to debate. Reuters, The New Yorker and the
TV-channel ABC News are some of the leading media that have brought the
story about the original exhibition, and at P.S.1 more than a thousand
visitors per day have been seeing it…" (Nikolaj M. Lassen, Weekendavisen,
March 30th, 2007)

A GROWING ART MOVEMENT - new types for
collaborations and diversity

By stimulating the immediate artistic expression before the moment has
passed and it’s too late, EMERGENCY ROOM becomes an energy generator
for artists’ enthusiasm. EMERGENCY ROOM is an art format that connects
artists in new constellations across different cultures and art
disciplines. EMERGENCY ROOM deliberately chooses to mix different
artist; for instance cross-media artists are sharing space with
abstract painters, sculptors (biodiversity). The format encourages
artists to collaborate: a Vietnamese artist will start working with a
Danish, a Polish with a Greek, a known artist with a younger, an artist
will collaborate with a researchers, philosophes, journalists and art
historians - all meeting each other under the clock just before
deadline and working together. EMERGENCY ROOM is an in time rendezvous.

As a caravan-like platform for moving exhibitions and by activating the
audience and artists from all over the world, EMERGENCY ROOM is a
growing community that creates new connections between the artists.
EMERGENCY ROOM is thus not only a venue for displaying of artworks, but
also as a fast growing movement. Everywhere the format is actualized
the community of EMERGENCY ROOM Artists grows. From earlier
realizations of EMERGENCY ROOM we already have a well-developed
collaborative networks and followers from France, Greece, Italy,
Germany, Vietnam and other countries. New artists will thus be involved
in the international artistic environment around EMERGENCY ROOM and
thereby get new international connections. The institution hosting
EMERGENCY ROOM is warmly invited to include its own community of
artists. An on-going collaboration between the participating artists
goes beyond the EMERGENCY ROOM as an event, often affecting the
artists’ praxis.

AESTHETICS OF EMERGENCY- New Art forms

AESTHETICS OF EMERGENCY is a special artistic approach that results in
a new form of aesthetics, rhetoric, methodology, communication and
organization. In order to be defined as AESTHETICS OF EMERGENCY, an
artwork has to be presented in real time, before the moment has passed
and it's too late. The time aspect in the EMERGENCY ROOMs requirement
that the art has to be in time in order to capture the NOW, makes new
quality criteria, for example, the pertinence becomes more important
criteria then the skills or execution. Artists develop new unexpected
art forms that can be studied as aesthetics of the emergency in
the Delay Museum.

Delay Museum – Delay Museum Collection

AESTHETICS OF EMERGENCY can be experienced in the Delay Museum
and its collection of artworks, that were once exhibited in the
EMERGENCY ROOM. This collection includes works from the last 7 years
collected in different EMERGENCY ROOMs like New York, Athens, Paris,
Berlin, Hanoi, Napoli, Copenhagen and Wroclaw. 450 artists are
represented in the collection and their works where shown in real time,
expressing for example about homophobia in Russia already in 2011 in
Hanoi, financial crises in Greece while Athens was burning in 2007 and
Iraq war in 2007 in MoMA PS1.

The artworks from the Delay Museum collection can be organized by the
institution curators in different ways and be read through different
topics like global war, xenophobia, financial crisis, global warming,
Iran- USA relationship, North and South Korea and surveillance society.
The works can also be classified by aesthetic methods (for example only
work done in collaborations or work only done by abstract painters,
expressing in outrage and precise way), geographically and time-based
(around specific events, like Arab Spring, financial crises etc.) In
this way a curator can make an exhibition with works borrowed from
Delay Museum showing what happened at the time of artwork production
and evaluating the pertinence of the artistic expression.

Physically the Delay Museum can be constructed as a specially built
room (like at European Culture Congress in Wroclaw) or integrated in
the all ready existing architecture of the institution like at MOMA
/PS1. Even an insertion of Delay Museum artworks in the permanent
collection of the museum is possible.

Other
formats

A part from EMERGENCY ROOM
Thierry Geoffroy/ COLONEL has over the years developed new art formats
for creation and distribution of art including Critical Run, Awareness
Muscle, Protest Fashion, HQ and Biennalist. These are all derived from
EMERGENCY ROOM and are smaller and more mobile alternatives, to the
core format EMERGENCY ROOM. All are converging as the goal is to
train the Awareness Muscle and "In time art ". The
EMERGENCY ROOM consist of 3 different spaces:

Two physical buildings:

The main building of EMERGENCY ROOM
where artists exhibit their work every day at 12.30 sharp. A round room
specially designed to encourage the debate happening around the art
works. Connected to the main room there would ideally be a
backstage room where artists can warm up and prepare.

Delay Museum, an exhibition
space where the audience can experience what has been exposed in the
EMERGENCY ROOM the previous days and months. This museum is no longer
ultracontemporary like in EMERGENCY ROOM but will be “ en RETARD”
in French RETARD means DELAY. This “delay” of opinions, where
past reactive interpretations are preserved, is a critical way of
thinking about contemporary art. The Delay Museum is also a place for
studying the aesthetics of the emergency.

Own media and public space
platform:

An Internet blog and a web TV
channel, both connected to the social media and daily circulating the
information coming from the artists. To have an own media platform is a
way of creating a dynamic catalog and discussion platform, globally
accessible. Performances and art in public space will also increas the
visibility of the whole EMERGENCY ROOM project.

Procedure

- Research in local community,
meeting participating artist, art historians and curators and
presenting to them the rules for participating in EMERGENCY ROOM that
they need to sign.

- Creation of the specially
designed EMERGENCY ROOM, Delay Museum and if possible a back stage
room.

- Activation and the
stimulation of the involved communities and the collaboration with the
local team working at the hosting institution.

- Establishment of Internet
medias

- Interviewing the artists.
Between 12.15 and 12.30, while the artists are on their way to show the
artworks at EMERGENCY ROOM, short video-interviews are conducted
capturing their burning thoughts while they are still moved and
exited. These video recordings of the artists rushing to
exhibit are not only important documentation material, but have also a
historic value.

- Showing of artworks. Every
day at 12.30 sharp in the EMERGENCY ROOM the artists show artworks
about the very last developments of alarming issues exposing a
diagnosis on current topics. The exhibition from today replaces the
exhibition from yesterday the change of exhibition is called “The
Passage” as it is punctual and a daily rendezvous with the artist
and the audience (art work not coming in time get rejected). This
is also a moment when collaborative work happens. The artists
decide together about the distribution of the artworks in the shared
space taking in consideration the pertinence and the level of emergency
in each artwork.

- The debate and media
distribution. Every day, once installed, the artworks get debated,
documented and redistributed through media communication channels.
The public and the medias can daily witness the passage
and also ask to the artist to debate opinions and visions.

- The exhibition. The new art
works are on display 24 hours and can be seen be public and visitors
until the next day 12.30

- Delay Museum.
The next day the artworks are reinstalled in an adjacent room called
Delay Museum, giving space for new day-fresh artworks in EMERGENCY ROOM.

The Delay Museum in Wroclaw
was constructed beside centanial Hall to
show the 4 days work production from theEmergency
Room that was build on the other side